The funniest post you saw this week may not have come from a friend; it may have come from a brand. Whether it is Kohl’s, Wendy’s, or Netflix, brands are behaving more like internet users than traditional advertisers.

This is no accident. Simply paying for advertising is no longer enough to capture people’s attention when they scroll thousands of posts every day. Brands are increasingly trying to join conversations that people are already having.

Memes, jokes and real-time reactions have become marketing tools. But why are brands investing so much in being culturally relevant rather than simply producing the perfect advertisement?

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Advertising in the age of endless scrolling

Traditional marketing often worked through interruption. A television commercial, billboard or social media ad place a message in front of people and hoped they would remember it.

That model still works. Major brands continue to spend heavily on it. But buying advertising space is no longer enough. A brand can reach more people when audiences find its content relatable enough to share.

This is the logic of the attention economy. Decades ago, economist Herbert Simon argued that when information becomes abundant, attention becomes scarce.

Today, every social media feed is a competition for that scarce resource. Brands can buy reach, but they cannot buy people’s willingness to share something.

A post that people voluntarily pass along becomes earned media: content that travels through audiences rather than through paid advertising.

Why do memes attract attention?

Humour is only part of the story. What makes content spread is often the emotion behind it.

A 2012 study on viral content found that content triggering high-arousal emotions, such as awe or anger, is more likely to be shared than content that produces little emotional response.

Amusement can work in much the same way. A good meme gives us a small emotional jolt that makes us want to send it to someone else.

Thus, a clever meme is a form of social currency: passing it on makes us look funny and in on the joke.

When brands successfully participate in that culture, they can feel less like distant corporations and more like another voice in the group chat.

That is the real reason memes work: they earn our attention instead of buying or interrupting it. And being chosen is worth far more than being seen.

Real-time marketing can make this especially powerful. During the recent World Cup, Levi’s responded to its stadium name being covered up for the tournament by changing its social media profile pictures to mimic the concealed logo.

The 2013 Super Bowl blackout offers another famous example. During the unexpected power outage, Oreo posted its “You can still dunk in the dark” message.

The post worked because it was timely, simple and connected to what millions of people were already watching.

The line between funny and cringeworthy

For every brand that gets it right, many others get it wrong.

A meme that lands can make a brand feel human. One that misses can make it look as though the brand is desperately trying to be relevant.

Common mistakes include using outdated memes, forcing products into unrelated jokes or adopting a tone that does not fit the brand.

Gucci’s 2017 #TFWGucci campaign, for example, was criticised for making memes feel forced and inconsistent with the luxury brand’s identity.

IHOP faced a different problem in 2015 when it posted a stack of pancakes with the caption “flat but has a GREAT personality”. The joke was widely criticised as sexist. IHOP deleted the post and apologised.

There is even a phrase for brands that try too hard to sound like internet users: “How do you do, fellow kids?”.

Sometimes, the smartest marketing decision is not to join the conversation at all.

When the audience becomes the content

The shift is bigger than a fashion for funny posts. It reflects a change in what brands are competing for.

Reach can still be bought. Attention, however, increasingly has to be earned.

Some brands go further by making consumers part of the content itself. Spotify Wrapped gives users personalised summaries of their listening habits, which millions then share on social media.

Spotify provides the format; users provide the jokes. A listener might share their results alongside a joke about spending 200,000 minutes listening to the same artist. The company creates the template, while the audience turns it into something worth sharing.

Consumers are no longer simply receiving branded content. They are distributing, adapting and sometimes creating it.

That changes what marketers need to understand. The challenge is no longer simply how to communicate a message clearly, but whether the audience will find it relevant enough to pass on.

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Every December millions share theirs unprompted, and the internet does the rest, like the screenshots claiming you spent 200,000 minutes overthinking. The brand supplies the canvas, the audience supplies the meme, and the listener becomes the medium either way.

That rewrites the job. The winning skill is no longer a bigger budget or a cleverer thirty-second script. It is cultural literacy: knowing what a community finds funny, what it finds tired, and when a brand has no business speaking at all.

For the next generation of marketers, the brief is moving from “how do we say this well” to “why would anyone pass this on.”

Para penulis tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/03/attention-cant-be-bought-so-brands-turn-to-memes/

Universities have been trying for years to cut back on the abuses among fraternities, with limited resources and limited success.

A new lawsuit, filed by a former Cornell University student in September 2026, is now rattling higher education and drawing national attention.

The person, identified as Jane Doe, has alleged that seven Chi Phi fraternity members drugged and gang-raped her at an on-campus fraternity house when she was a sophomore in 2024.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to pursue criminal charges against the fraternity members in 2024. Following the filing of the case and [emergence of new information], however, Van Houten said on Sept. 26 that he is planning “to discuss new evidence that exists” with the former Cornell student about her sexual assault claims.

The high-profile Cornell case is just one of the latest fraternity scandals. In August 2026, Pennsylvania announced charges against current and former Penn State fraternity members for their involvement in a criminal narcotics operation.

As an education scholar who researches the experiences of undergraduate college students and fraternities, I believe that universities and colleges have not devoted enough resources toward curtailing the hazing, sexual assault and other kinds of dangerous behavior that sometimes happens at fraternities or other student organizations.

But there is only so much they can do – in part because beneath it all is a hypermasculine culture of proving one’s worth.

A need for more enforcement

In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act pressured states to set 21 as the minimum age to purchase and consume alcohol. All states made 21 the minimum age by 1988.

The change meant that most college students could no longer legally purchase alcohol, leading some of them to drink in more private settings, like fraternity houses.

Some universities felt concerned about the alcohol-related injuries and deaths occurring at fraternity houses. Schools also faced the possibility of lawsuits over underage drinking.

Harmful binge drinking remained a major problem on college campuses throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. A lot of the documented hazing incidents at fraternities during this time also involved alcohol.

Sexual assault on college campuses, including at fraternities, was another major issue during this time.

A lot of universities started to respond to students’ excessive alcohol use, in part through social norming. This term means correcting people’s mistaken beliefs about what their peers normally do, like regularly drinking excessively.

They also tried other harm-reduction strategies, like sharing direct information with students about the negative effects of consuming alcohol, as well as peer-led interventions to try to reduce unsafe drinking or encourage alcohol moderation.

But they didn’t necessarily respond to related problems surrounding hazing, such as substance misuse or addiction.

Some of the students’ parents, including those who had children who died as a result of hazing, were concerned. They developed a large, nationwide parent lobby to advocate for changes in hazing laws across states. These groups, not the universities, have been the most influential in advocating for changes in hazing laws.

Some prevention efforts

It’s not that some universities haven’t tried to reduce hazing on their campuses. These efforts include practices such as hosting educational sessions, workshops, speakers and even placing moratoriums on social fraternity events that include alcohol.

Recent approaches have included teaching students how to recognize when their peers are emotionally distressed and need help.

Some universities have started research centers on hazing or hired full-time staff members whose jobs involve prevention and response work following a harmful incident such as hazing or sexual violence.

Limited responses

Universities can kick fraternities off campus and kick out athletes who are charged with hazing or sexual assault.

But fraternities can also exist as private organizations, independent of a university. A university can withdraw recognition from a fraternity chapter and prohibit it from hosting events on campus, but that does not necessarily prevent the organization from hosting gatherings off campus.

Another issue is that universities and colleges like Cornell have a civil process for dealing with hazing and other crimes, including sexual assault, but not a criminal one. Schools cannot launch a criminal investigation, but they can levy educational sanctions, including banning students from campus or taking away students’ scholarships.

Expelling students for illegal misconduct such as sexual assault and hazing is a really common approach, but that is about as far as these schools can go in terms of discipline.

Schools may also cooperate with criminal investigations. Campus police, for example, can share their evidence and records with outside law enforcement. Or university staff may testify against students in court. But universities themselves cannot bring criminal charges.

After Jane Doe reported the incident to university police, Cornell says it took action.

In a September 2026 statement, Cornell said its range of sanctions included “expulsions and suspensions.” A few students were asked to write essays, but Cornell says this wasn’t “as a sole consequence of their involvement.”

The Chi Phi chapter involved in the incident was also closed in 2024, according to Cornell.

Following the lawsuit and recent national attention it received, Cornell agreed to bring in outside lawyers to determine whether it properly conducted the 2024 rape investigation.

The role of masculinity

Proving your masculinity can become a central part of proving your worth and fit at a fraternity.

This hypermasculine culture – combined with a culture of secrecy – could be a powder keg for sexual violence. It’s a dynamic also seen in the military and on sports teams.

Hypermasculinity is not simply tied up in an individual’s behavior, but can become embedded within organizational cultures that reward toughness, dominance, risk-taking and silence.

In fraternities, these expectations may shape how members understand belonging and status. These issues may also discourage students from expressing vulnerability and seeking help.

Understanding these gendered and cultural dynamics is, I believe, essential to developing prevention efforts that address not only individual conduct, but also the organizational norms that allow harmful behaviors to persist.

Pietro A. Sasso does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/cornell-7-case-puts-a-spotlight-on-fraternity-misconduct-and-the-limits-of-universities-power-to-stop-it/

A growing body of research is generating renewed interest in potential hidden spaces beyond the decorated walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in Egypt.

Some researchers have raised the possibility that these concealed chambers – if they exist – could contain the burial place of Nefertiti, Tutankhamun’s stepmother and mother-in-law. Nefertiti was made famous by a remarkable painted bust of her head found in Tell-el Amarna, Egypt, in 1912.

The hypothesis about hidden rooms was first proposed more than a decade ago. A key advocate of the idea, archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, mentions several clues that he believes may point to Nefertiti’s burial being nearby, including “hidden” hieroglyphics that were painted over on the north wall of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

A team has now published a review of archaeological observations and geophysical investigations at Tutankhamun’s burial chamberb (also known by the tomb number KV62), including results from a survey carried out between 2023 and 2024.

Lead researcher Mamdouh Eldamaty told Nature the results were suggestive of concealed structures beyond KV62. A decision on whether to carefully drill through a wall and deploy miniature cameras could be made in coming months. However, other experts are cautious about the findings.

There is a delicate balance between speculation, hypothesis testing, and discovery. Some of the greatest scientific and archaeological breakthroughs have come from researchers willing to challenge paradigms and pursue ideas drawn from vague and improbable historical clues.

However, limited evidence combined with great expectations can encourage conclusions that run ahead of the data. The possibility of hidden chambers beyond the tomb of Tutankhamun sits precisely at this intersection.

Yet the distinction between evidence for unexplored spaces and evidence for the burial of Nefertiti remains substantial. The challenge is not to decide what we hope to find, but to evaluate objectively what the available evidence does, and does not, support.

The media readily gravitates toward the most spectacular conclusions. The search for Cleopatra’s tomb at Taposiris Magna provides a cautionary example.

Previously looted tombs, artefacts, and even the renewed investigation of a subterranean hydraulic tunnel were frequently presented as indications that the discovery of Cleopatra’s tomb was imminent. Yet the existence of an aqueduct consistent with Hellenistic (Greek-influenced) urban infrastructure does not constitute evidence for a royal burial.

A more measured approach can be seen in the work of Greek archaeologist Calliope Papakosta in Alexandria, Egypt. During a visit to her excavations, she showed me evidence suggesting that Alexander the Great’s tomb might lie nearby. The most compelling object was a marble statue of a young warrior that she argued, and I agree, may depict Alexander.

The style was consistent with the school of Lysippus, Alexander’s court sculptor. Unfortunately, the sculpture had been discarded within a Roman fill layer and thus removed from its original context.

Papakosta recognised both the promise and limitations of the evidence. While hopeful that her work might illuminate the fate of Alexander’s tomb, she consistently framed her discoveries within the bounds of what the data demonstrated.

The debate surrounding Tutankhamun’s tomb raises similar issues. Tutankhamun’s tomb is unusually small for a pharaoh, and Nicholas Reeves has argued that it represents only the outer portion of a larger Amarna-period (roughly 1350–1325 BC) royal burial complex.

The abnormality of the tomb is widely accepted and it has been presumed to be a small private tomb that was hastily adapted for the king because of his death at a young age.

A suggestion of door seams in the decorated north wall of the burial chamber stimulated the extended tomb complex theory, but damaging the wall to probe it would be out of the question. Progress would therefore depend upon geophysics providing a means to peer through the wall without damaging it.

The first investigations employed relatively low-frequency Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), principally in the 400-900 megahertz (MHz) range. Such frequencies provide greater penetration into the surrounding limestone than higher-frequency radar. But this comes at the expense of spatial resolution. Later investigations expanded this range and included frequencies as high as 3 gigahertz (GHz).

My own inclination would have been to place particular emphasis on the highest-frequency radar antennae (the parts of the GPR system that transmit and receive electromagnetic pulses) because resolving whether the north wall contains evidence of a door seam is an important first step to answering other key questions.

High-frequency systems offer less penetration but are generally better suited to detecting subtle structural discontinuities immediately behind the wall surface.

More recent investigations added microgravity surveys made from above the theorised complex. These measure minute variations in the Earth’s gravitational field caused by differences in density below ground. Higher-frequency GPR has also now been added to the team’s toolkit.

This was a sensible evolution of the research strategy. The problem was, to protect the wall paintings, the GPR antennae could not be placed directly against the decorated surfaces.

The resulting air gap weakened coupling between the antenna and the wall, reducing signal quality and complicating interpretation. For GPR, the farther the antenna is from the surface, the more difficult it becomes to resolve subtle architectural features.

Microgravity surveys do not suffer from this limitation. They are capable of identifying anomalies within the limestone below the sensor. The challenge facing both types of investigation is that they have not produced unambiguous evidence for a large open chamber immediately beyond the wall.

To account for this, proponents of the hidden chamber hypothesis have suggested that any passageways may have been deliberately backfilled with rubble, obscuring the void signatures that investigators originally expected to detect. This is plausible and merits further testing, but it remains an interpretation, not fact.

Some investigators have argued that the currently available geophysical evidence does not demonstrate the presence of hidden chambers.

This has led to the next logical step in the scientific process: direct testing. The current proposal involves drilling a small borehole and deploying miniature cameras into one of the identified anomalies. Such an investigation has the potential to move the discussion from inference to observation.

Whatever the outcome, the investigations undertaken by Eldamaty and colleagues represent the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the question to date.

Currently, the hidden chamber theory remains exactly what a good scientific hypothesis should be: intriguing, testable, and worthy of investigation. What it is not, at least yet, is a discovery.

Jay Silverstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/secret-chambers-in-tutankhamuns-tomb-could-hold-the-burial-of-a-lost-egyptian-queen-we-may-get-answers-soon/

Andy Burnham’s revelation that he was prepared “to go all the way” in terms of the UK’s relationship with the EU came as a shock to many. While a commitment to rejoining the EU in the next Labour manifesto is far from a given – and the prime minister’s language was non-committal – the statement broke a taboo in the party.

The idea of “reversing Brexit” seems to be in genuine contention, with Burnham’s advisors assessing public support. Meanwhile, allies in the EU seem to be taking the idea seriously, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, promising to welcome the UK back.

In practical terms, it is not difficult to see why the idea of rejoining is tempting. The UK economy is languishing, in part due to the estimated 6% cost of Brexit to GDP. The UK follows many EU rules in practice anyway, but lacks the unfettered market access that would come as a member.

Brexit benefits have been hard to find outside ill-defined ideas of “taking back control” or rebuilding national self-confidence. Meanwhile, much has changed in the UK’s external environment. Russia invaded Ukraine just over a year after the UK ended formal security cooperation with the EU, and the second Trump administration appears to have little love for the US’s traditional Nato allies. Commonwealth countries, especially Canada, Australia and New Zealand, appear to be moving closer to the EU than they are to the UK.

The limits of the reset

The idea of rejoining the EU also reflects the limitations of the “reset” begun under Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, the most difficult challenge has been squaring UK and EU “red lines” for continued cooperation. For the EU, these focus on ensuring the integrity of the single market and the balance of rights and obligations. For the UK they have involved an aversion to free movement and to the sovereignty cost of being subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice.

These constraints meant the options available to the UK were highly restrictive. Essentially, it can be either a rule-taker under the “Norway model” (membership of the single market via the European Economic Area), or agree a more limited free trade agreement as the UK eventually did. Bespoke arrangements are not on offer and never will be.

This tension confronts pro-Europeans and soft Brexiteers most starkly. The same logic that made life difficult for former PM Theresa May continues to bedevil the reset.

Efforts under Starmer to rebuild the relationship have turned out to be more difficult than expected. There has been slow progress on emissions trading and agri-food issues, and a high price tag for the UK’s participation in EU programmes, such as the defence procurement scheme known as Safe.

Faced with the prospect of decades of costly, piecemeal re-engagement through the reset or becoming a rule-taker via single-market membership from the outside, Burnham could well decide that the radical option with the greater payoff is more desirable.

Politically, putting rejoining the EU on the table is more difficult to understand. Brexit produced a schism that successive governments have been keen not to reopen.

It has proved to be a successful mobilisation tool on the right. Conservative PM Boris Johnson forged a broad coalition in December 2019 by claiming Brexit was under threat, and his successors have turned their attention to the European Court of Human Rights now that the EU is out of the picture.

Burnham may believe that a clearer position could attract pro-EU constituencies that have moved to the Greens, the Liberal Democrats or the SNP. He may also have calculated that if Labour is going to be accused of betraying Brexit in any case – as Reform UK has claimed – then it makes sense to go the whole way.

He may also be banking on the data which show that many UK citizens feel Brexit has gone badly, with a clear majority (57%) believing it to have been a mistake. But dislike of Brexit does not necessarily mean support for rejoining. Many citizens are just tired of the issue by now.

The challenges of rejoining

The process itself may be painful – and could throw up curveballs. The UK would need to negotiate the terms of re-accession and seek to regain its opt-out on joining the euro. It would also need to implement EU rules passed since Brexit, many of which the UK would not have supported in their current form – most notably the AI Act (amid fears it could stifle innovation).

The UK would be rejoining from a position of weakness and would be subject to the demands of individual member states. Any of these could veto the decision. And while European leaders seem open to the idea now, enthusiasm for closer ties with the UK has a notable tendency to diminish over time.

Fears that the UK could act as a disruptor, or even the risk of a second Brexit, might limit support for the UK rejoining. And political change in France and Germany could bring about governments less favourable to the prospect.

It is early days – and Burnham’s words may come to nothing. But the conversation is unlikely to stop here. Through the mere suggestion, the prime minister has rekindled the prospect that one day Britain will return to the EU. Expect more mentions of rejoining in future as the UK yet again grapples with the trade-offs involved with EU membership.

Benjamin Martill is affiliated with Chatham House and the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations and has previously received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/burnham-has-said-the-unsayable-on-brexit-what-happens-now/

When Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the Labour conference that he is going to change the state pension’s triple lock mechanism, the backlash was immediate. For 15 years, the triple lock has been one of the few genuinely untouchable policies in British politics.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, warned that Burnham’s plans could amount to “electoral suicide”. And Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, said the prime minister was considering “an offensive against our elderly”.

But, interestingly, the public’s reaction has been considerably more positive, reflecting changing views over what Britons consider fair and acceptable around elderly care and incomes.

Despite some of the headlines, the triple lock is not being scrapped. Rather, the government’s proposed reform from 2030 envisions the state pension rising each year by the highest of inflation, 2.5%, or whatever is needed to keep pace with earnings.

What is being scrapped is the mechanism that pushes the pension ever higher relative to wages. Under the current rules, whenever inflation or the 2.5% floor outpaces earnings growth, the pension gets a bigger rise than wages that year – and keeps that gain permanently.

For the rest of the population, wage growth tends to be a response to inflation – but under the triple lock, pensioners feel the benefit of both (so-called “double counting”). The new rule would still protect pensions against inflation and keep them in line with earnings over time, but would stop these one-off gains from building up year after year.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, had this been applied since 2010, the UK state pension would still have grown 6% faster than prices – but the government would be spending £9 billion a year less than it is today.

The issue that doesn’t split generations

Pensions are an age-sensitive issue, and age is increasingly the biggest divide in British politics.

At the 2024 election, the gap between young and old in support for the main parties was around 30 points. On anything from immigration to climate action, opinions are hugely split along age lines.

Yet pensions are the exception. In 2021, a YouGov poll found that 68% of Britons wanted to keep the triple lock, and just 11% wanted to scrap it. Even 18- to 29-year-olds backed it by 53% to 12%.

As recently as May, support still outweighed opposition among 18- to 34-year-olds by 44% to 22%. Older people hold firmer views, but no age group has ever wanted it gone.

This is not because young people think the system is fair. The same 2021 survey found that only around a quarter of under-40s thought it fair for pensions to rise while workers’ earnings fell, compared with nearly two-thirds of over-60s.

Nor is it because they expect the same deal: most Britons think they will have lower standards in retirement. So what holds the consensus together?

Part of the answer lies in the family. Almost three in ten Britons under the age of 60 expect to give significant financial or practical help to an older relative within the next decade. This research found that asking younger people to consider their own future pensions did nothing to raise their support for government spending on older people.

The only message that increased support for spending on older people was one that stressed how it would ease the burden of looking after parents and grandparents.

The link runs the other way too. Older Britons whose younger relatives are struggling are more supportive of spending on education, childcare and housing. This is driven more by concern for those relatives than by self-interest.

In other words, voters don’t see pensions as a transfer from young to old, but as support that flows through families in both directions. That’s why, unlike most issues, they don’t pit the generations against each other.

And these ties are growing tighter: 43% of 25-year-olds still live with their parents. But this “privileged dependence” helps only those whose families can afford it.

My research points to a further reason for the relative consensus: economic issues divide generations far less than cultural ones. In a survey experiment using appeals adapted from the 2019 UK general election manifestos, I found that older voters did not penalise candidates who promised to prioritise the young.

This was true even when the candidate said it was time to shift attention away from the elderly. Economic appeals moved voters of all ages more than cultural ones did.

Burnham’s real test

As with any research looking into economic policy preferences, the catch comes around who is expected to pay for them. None of the appeals in my experiment asked older voters to pay for anything, but Burnham’s reform does. It asks pensioners to accept slower growth in their own income.

At the same time, it channels the savings into something older voters want: 80% of over-50s back a National Care Service that is free at the point of use. Across the under-50s too, net support for this exceeds 60%, reflecting appetite for reforms that focus on care provision beyond mere income protection.

The early polling suggests Burnham’s triple lock gamble is less dangerous than it looks, with Britons supporting the plan by 48% to 28%.

A Survation poll found 55% of over-65s were in favour and 23% against. Asked if the policy made them more or less likely to vote Labour, over-65s split evenly (21% against 20%), while under-45s swung clearly towards the party. These first reactions suggest the policy is more promising than disastrous for Labour’s electoral prospects.

The triple lock has been protected less by self-interest than by family ties that cut across generations. Framed as a question of how families look after one another, pension reform may be one of the few issues that can bridge the country’s age divide.

Laura Serra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/plans-to-tamper-with-the-pension-triple-lock-might-not-be-as-dangerous-for-labour-as-some-believe/

While scientists are known for their dedication to their research, crawling on the floor to avoid electrocution for the sake of a measurement seems a little excessive. But this is what British physicist John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest T.S. Walton had to do in the early 1930s while studying the structure of atomic nuclei. Luckily, their efforts led to their receiving the Nobel Prize in 1951.

In the early 1930s, scientists were just beginning to discover the extraordinary world hidden inside the atom, which is made up of a dense center, called the nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it.

Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford had already shown that radioactive materials sometimes emitted particles, naturally changing the makeup of their atomic nuclei. When energetic particles collided with atomic nuclei, they could trigger a reaction that rearranges the protons and neutrons in the nucleus – sometimes transforming one element into another. But scientists could only study this phenomenon using particles from radioactive decays, which had limited energy and intensity available.

Cockcroft and Walton wondered whether they could instead create these collisions using particles accelerated by a machine.

The first particle accelerator

Working under Rutherford at the famous Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Cockcroft and Walton developed the first machine capable of deliberately accelerating hydrogen atoms, made up of a single proton, to high energies. The high-voltage system they developed could produce up to 800,000 volts, which is the same as over 500,000 AA batteries.

This first particle accelerator design was a far cry from the massive machines you can find today. While the apparatus of Cockroft and Walton could fit in a room, modern accelerators at facilities like CERN in Switzerland can reach up to 17 miles (27 kilometers) in length. Still, the 1932 design laid down essential scientific bedrock. Over the past 75 years, accelerator technology has led to many cutting-edge physics breakthroughs.

A particle accelerator uses electric fields to increase the energy of charged particles, such as positively charged protons or negatively charged electrons. It then directs the stream of particles onto a target. By studying what happens when these energetic particles collide with target materials, scientists can investigate the shapes and sizes of atomic nuclei.

This idea is somewhat similar to a microscopic racetrack. Instead of accelerating cars, it accelerates particles that are far too small to see with the naked eye.

In 1932, Cockcroft and Walton directed their accelerated protons at a lithium target and observed something remarkable. In the collision, the lithium nuclei produced two alpha particles, which are made up of two protons and two neutrons.

With this experiment, Cockcroft and Walton showed that scientists could build machines to probe and transform nuclei. They helped establish particle accelerators as an essential tool for nuclear physicists and beyond.

Modern use of accelerators in physics

The developments Cockcroft and Walton made marked the first step toward widespread use of particle accelerators, which continues today.

The world’s largest and most powerful accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which makes protons travel so fast that they could circle the Earth more than seven times in one second.

As experimental nuclear physicists, we perform most of our research at accelerator facilities around the world. These include the accelerators at our home institutions: the Edwards Accelerator Laboratory at Ohio University and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University.

In our research, we use particle accelerators to study the nuclear reactions that take place when stars explode out in space. The accelerator facility is essential for recreating in the laboratory the exact conditions that exist inside stars. This research teaches us about the life and death of stars and how nuclear reactions inside them build the elements you see all around you.

Accelerators beyond physics

While basic research laboratories are a natural place to find particle accelerators, the technology spreads into many other areas.

One key area is medicine. Over 1,500 accelerators are used for cancer diagnosis and treatment. One use involves directing a beam of protons or other heavier particles into the patient, targeting unwanted cancerous cells (proton/heavy ion therapy).

Drug developers also use accelerators to produce radiopharmaceuticals, which are drugs that contain a radioactive isotope. A radioactive isotope is a variant of an element that exists only for a short time and emits radiation when it decays. Medical practitioners use these radiopharmaceuticals to diagnose and treat disease, including cancer. Because the radioactive isotopes exist only for minutes or hours before decaying, many hospitals have their own accelerators so that they can produce them locally.

A lesser known use of accelerators is in art and archaeology. Accelerator-based techniques can determine the types of elements and molecules present in an artifact. They can identify the material an object is made of or hint at the manufacturing techniques used to create them. This information can help authenticate art pieces or tell researchers about the cultural heritage of objects.

The Louvre museum in Paris has its own dedicated accelerator, installed in 1988. It is the only accelerator in the world exclusively used for cultural heritage purposes.

Finally, the findings from accelerator experiments help scientists design satellites. Along with the rockets and spacecraft that transport them into orbit, satellites are constantly bombarded with fast moving particles that travel through space called cosmic rays. These rays can damage the delicate electronics on satellites.
High-energy accelerators help scientists test these space technologies and prepare them to stand up to radiation from cosmic rays.

The legacy of Cockcroft and Walton echoes throughout accelerator laboratories around the world. Their pioneering work accelerated the field of nuclear science. It also propelled the development of modern accelerators that are vastly more powerful and sophisticated.

Artemis Spyrou receives funding from the US National Science Foundation.

Andrea Richard receives funding from the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/physicists-who-uncovered-the-first-particle-accelerator-were-honored-with-a-nobel-prize-75-years-ago-their-work-shaped-physics-medicine-and-even-art-research/

Knowledge workers such as scientists, teachers, lawyers and business leaders are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence applications for tasks that demand imagination, creativity and problem-solving. Ironically, perhaps, recent research shows that people who interact with generative AI for work tasks can end up not thinking critically. They can surrender to AI’s quick and confident answers, which can lead to speedy but low-quality solutions.

Scholars refer to this increasingly prevalent problem as cognitive offloading. And they are showing that it can erode the very skills that make knowledge workers valuable.

My research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and knowledge work provides a different view, however. In one study, my colleagues and I interviewed 45 knowledge workers at a U.S. public university. They all were using generative AI applications in their core tasks: generating new ideas, solving complex problems and designing novel solutions. We also analyzed the prompts and outputs from their iterative AI chats.

We found that when knowledge workers intentionally use AI to challenge their ideas – to generate friction – they can significantly improve their performance. Previous research on human-AI collaboration for loan evaluations had similar results.

How to create friction

Using AI to find information that contradicts your own can reveal unlikely perspectives that disrupt your familiar logic and spark new insights. This is particularly important because AI models quickly become familiar with how a user prompts the model and interprets its output, and the model presents information according to these patterns.

For example, a marketing professional in our study asked AI to create virtual customers with personas that would lead them to dislike a product under development, which was an accounting certificate program. The contrary feedback from the AI model revealed customer preferences that the accounting professional designing the program had not considered, such as using multiple cases from different industries to illustrate a principle, rather than cases from the same industry.

An attorney used AI to find obscure legal loopholes and to consider how companies might exploit them. That exposed surprising but realistic scenarios of hard-to-detect unethical behavior in employees.

Exploring unlikely and opposing ideas presented by AI can feel disorienting. To help, knowledge workers should lean on their own expertise to question surprising information that an AI system might provide.

An operations research scientist who works with supply chains described adapting unfamiliar computing programs from other fields suggested by AI, such as signal processing and wireless communication, which helped him create a stronger program of his own. Although the programs were new to him, his strong understanding of supply network modeling helped him see how he could apply them.

A study I was not involved with found that creative writers produce better copy when they use AI as a sounding board rather than to ghostwrite.

Knowledge workers can also use AI’s outputs to examine topics from multiple viewpoints, deepening their knowledge.

A research scholar in our study probed an AI system for journal papers that used a concept he was using, but in contrasting settings, which helped him understand the concept from different angles. A lawyer followed up on legal citations suggested by an AI model by asking for different types of illustrative cases. That helped her fully understand the original case and write a strong legal brief.

Helping knowledge workers help themselves

Leaders of organizations can encourage knowledge workers to develop friction-generating queries of AI models.

A straightforward approach is to use prompts that challenge rather than agree with a person’s thinking. People can also draw on their own knowledge, work experiences and professional ethics to scrutinize AI outputs. Sometimes people realize that a response lacks originality, even if it is factually correct.

Organization leaders can also create programs for knowledge workers to share their experiences and insights. Regular sessions – led by cross-functional AI task forces or AI champions – can also help knowledge workers keep up with rapidly evolving AI tools.

Providing resources for knowledge workers is important as well. Internal AI boot camps and workshops led by AI experts or experienced users can help workers understand what AI tools can and cannot do.

A professor leading an initiative about AI use in teaching described how she developed internal competitions with prizes for professors who successfully completed AI boot camps. Organizations can also offer AI sandboxes – safe, private environments where employees can experiment and learn how to use AI tools.

In these efforts to support knowledge workers, an important detail is pointing out that adding friction can appear to make an AI system work against you, but – as new research shows – it actually helps it work for you.

The data collection site is the university I current work in (UMass Amherst). The project is an academic research project done as part of my own research as a scholar/professor. There is no monetary/consulting aspect. I have clicked no for the first question because this is not a consulting project with no monetary benefits to anyone. All data are anonymized.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/want-to-use-ai-to-improve-your-work-have-it-disagree-with-you/

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) recently released its report on deaths that occurred in 2024. The headline findings contain a sobering, recurring truth: diabetes was once again the country’s leading underlying natural cause of death.

In 2024 alone, 28,767 people died from complications caused by diabetes, accounting for 6.1% of all deaths nationwide. That is an average of nearly 79 deaths every day.

Diabetes also claimed the top spot in 2022 and 2023.
These numbers cannot be accepted as South Africa’s new normal. Behind every data point is a human life, a grieving family and, all too often, years of encounters with a health system that missed opportunities to diagnose, treat and support people in time.

As a public health specialist and chairperson of the non-profit organisation Diabetes Alliance, I view this three-year trend as an unacceptable tragedy. Diabetes is manageable. With timely support, people can lead long, healthy lives free from preventable complications. Acknowledging this crisis is the start, but recognition must give way to political action. The Department of Health must establish a national diabetes strategy with clear targets for prevention and care. The finance minister must resource it. And the Presidency must lead a coordinated, whole-of-government response.

The broader health landscape is equally stark. Noncommunicable diseases accounted for 60.7% of all recorded deaths in 2024. The top three causes of natural death – diabetes, hypertensive diseases and cerebrovascular diseases – frequently overlap in the same individuals. Managing these interconnected conditions through isolated disease programmes makes little sense for primary care clinics or the patients navigating them.

Reading beyond the numbers

At first glance, the 2024 total is 800 deaths higher than the revised 2023 figure of 27,967 (5.8% of recorded deaths). Stats SA compiles these mortality figures from death notification forms filed through the Department of Home Affairs. Medical practitioners record the cause of death, which Stats SA then classifies using international coding standards. Late death registrations and administrative backlogs are processed retroactively; this leads to revision or updating of prior years’ totals.

The updated count for 2022 stood at 33,126, higher than diabetes deaths recorded in 2023 and 2024. Diabetes has remained South Africa’s single largest natural killer for three consecutive years.

The diabetes burden is also deeply unequal:

• Women bear the heaviest loss: diabetes was the leading recorded natural cause among women, claiming 17,429 lives (7.9% of all female deaths) and 11,334 or 4.5% of all male deaths.

• Working-age adults are hard hit: it ranked first among people aged 45-64, accounting for 9,364 deaths (7.9% of deaths in this group).

• Geographic split: diabetes ranked as the top natural cause in five provinces, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Eastern Cape and Gauteng, while hypertensive diseases led in the remaining four provinces. These provincial rankings are not a measure of individual care quality or residency. They are a starting point for region-specific questions about access and system performance.

The geographic split shows the need to investigate whether access to diagnosis, treatment and good quality care differs between and within provinces.

A death certificate is only the final chapter

Mortality statistics record the primary cause listed on a death notification, but remain blind to what happened along the way.

They cannot tell us how many South Africans live with undiagnosed diabetes. They cannot show whether a patient had consistent access to insulin and testing supplies, whether their blood sugar was adequately controlled, or whether a simple follow-up could have prevented a fatal complication. Nor do they capture the full toll of diabetes when another condition is listed as the underlying cause.

Those are the questions we must answer while patients are still alive.

In my work on strengthening diabetes care, including the Tshwane Insulin Project – a nurse-led programme that helped people with type 2 diabetes start and adjust insulin treatment in primary care, with follow-up support at home – I have seen where care pathways break down, and where they succeed. Survival rarely hinges on high-tech interventions. It depends on the links in primary healthcare:

• a trained clinic nurse with the time to act

• a reliable supply chain for medicines and diagnostics

• routine follow-up mechanisms when a patient misses an appointment

• regular screening for kidney, eye and vascular (blood vessel) complications

• support systems that respect the economic reality of a person’s daily life.

We need real-time clinical data that helps a facility respond today, not a national death tally published two years later.

Turning policy into frontline care

South Africa already has a framework: the National Strategic Plan for Non-Communicable Diseases and its 90-60-50 targets. This cascade aims to ensure that 90% of adults know their blood pressure and blood glucose status, 60% of those with elevated levels receive treatment, and 50% of those receiving care achieve clinical control.

The challenge is making policy work in practice.

Tools like the National Health Laboratory Service diabetes dashboard offer valuable insights into blood sugar levels control across districts. But to close the loop, South Africa urgently needs a national diabetes registry and integrated digital tracking to understand who enters care, who remains in care, and who is being left behind.

From declaration to delivery

After the 2025 Diabetes Summit, the Diabetes Alliance launched the Johannesburg Declaration for Accelerated Action on Diabetes. The declaration calls for coordinated national leadership, sustainable financing, decentralised primary care, and direct participation by people living with diabetes. It asks the Presidency to lead a multisectoral response and calls on the National Treasury and health sector to match policy commitments with financial resources.

The latest mortality report gives this agenda even more urgency. There are three practical priorities:

1. Connect early diagnosis to sustained care. Screening is only useful if a positive result leads to uninterrupted treatment, reliable medicines, blood glucose monitoring and clinical review.

2. Measure quality of care: publish a picture of diagnosis, treatment, retention and complication rates by district and province.

3. Address the conditions in which health choices are made. Food prices, transport barriers and economic hardship shape health outcomes.

People living with diabetes must help define what quality care looks like. Their experience should guide national policy and daily clinic operations alike.

Patrick Ngassa Piotie is the Chairperson of the Diabetes Alliance in South Africa.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/79-deaths-a-day-south-africas-diabetes-crisis-needs-a-new-strategy/

By the time Dolly Parton died on Aug. 25, 2026, her Imagination Library had gifted more than 332 million children’s books to babies and kids in all 50 states and four other countries: Canada, the U.K., Australia and Ireland.

If they were set end to end, these books would circle the earth 1.8 times.

This free program mails an age-appropriate book monthly to each enrolled child from birth to age 5, meaning up to 60 books will fill these children’s shelves by the time they graduate from the program.

Though a selection committee tweaks the lists annually, each participant receives Watty Piper’s “The Little Engine That Could” as their first book and Nancy Carlson’s “Look Out Kindergarten, Here I Come!” as their last.

I’m an information science professor who studies reading behavior. In my research for an upcoming academic article about the Imagination Library, I’ve found that its free monthly books help families develop children’s literacy, prepare children for kindergarten and encourage a lifelong love of reading.

Emphasis on early literacy

Parton, most remembered as a popular country singer, embraced many musical genres during her long and successful career in show business. She was also a songwriter, entrepreneur, actor and philanthropist.

She created this program because she, like most early childhood literacy experts, believed that reading begins in the home. That is, parents and other guardians are a child’s first teachers, and reading aloud to children contributes to their future literacy.

First graders who struggle with reading usually continue to have trouble with literacy later on.

Very young children in lower-income households generally have less access to books and hear fewer words than higher-income kids. This class-based difference may lead to disparities in reading skills later on.

A homegrown program

Like Parton, who was born in a one-bedroom cabin in an Appalachian region of Tennessee that had neither running water nor electricity, the Imagination Library’s origins were modest. It started in her hometown, hardscrabble Sevier County, in late 1995. Its initial order of 1,760 books was destined for the children who lived where she grew up.

The program came from “a very serious place in my heart,” Parton once said. On many occasions, she emphasized how her own father’s illiteracy inspired her to found it – with him.

“Daddy couldn’t read nor write, and it always just seemed to cripple him, and he was embarrassed about it,” Parton told American Libraries in 2018. “My daddy just loved it when all the little kids would call me ‘The Book Lady,’” she said later.

In contrast, Parton was a bookworm. “I always loved books,” she explained in an interview. “I don’t remember learning to read, it was just something I always did. That’s how I knew there was a world beyond the Smoky Mountains.”

How it works

Parton’s Dollywood Foundation covers overhead and administrative expenses, coordinates the book selection committee, maintains the book order system and arranges orders and fulfillment.

The Imagination Library is available to any child in a community participating in the program, regardless of their family’s income.

To be eligible, a community must secure a local partner. Local partners publicize the program and enroll children. They have to pay US$2.60 per month per child to defray costs of purchasing books wholesale and mailing them. These partners include schools, public libraries and government agencies, and several kinds of nonprofits, including foundations.

Nonpartisan expert committees of educators and librarians select the books, nearly all published by Penguin Random House.

The program is continuing under the direction of the Dollywood Foundation’s president, Jeff Conyers. A Penguin Random House vice president said, “We
will continue that work with the utmost pride and care, just as we know she would have wanted.”

But funding challenges have arisen in at least four states.

Steady growth and diversification

By 2001, the Imagination Library had expanded to affiliates in nearly a dozen states. The next year, it extended its reach to 92 Native American communities, partnering with the Cherokee Nation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Parents as Teachers and the National Center for Family Literacy.

In late 2003, the Imagination Library mailed its one-millionth book. In 2004, it launched its first statewide program – fittingly, in Tennessee.

It added bilingual titles in Spanish and English in 2003 and launched a bilingual Spanish website in 2022. The Imagination Library also supplied audio and braille books for those who needed them beginning in 2011.

Parton celebrated when the library mailed its 100-millionth book in 2018. “We never thought it would be this big,” she told NPR. “I just wanted to do something great for my dad and for my home county and, at the most, maybe a couple of counties over. But then it just took wings of its own.”

The Imagination Library shipped its 200-millionth book in 2023 and its 300-millionth book in 2025. By 2024, 1 in 7 children under the age of 5 in the United States were receiving books for free every month, courtesy of this initiative.

Other programs give free books to young children, including Reach Out and Read in the U.S., which since 1989 has handed them out at children’s medical checkups. Bookstart, which launched in 1992, offers every baby in England, Wales and Northern Ireland a free book and tips on reading aloud to kids.

Program benefits

Parents and caregivers
highly praise the program.

Many studies have found that children get excited about getting their own books in the mail, addressed to them personally. Both they and their families also take great pride in book ownership.

“A lot of (children) wait at the mailbox at the first of the month,” Parton told The Washington Post. “They think that I bring the book myself, like I’m Santa Claus.”

As one parent told an education researcher, “We read the books when they come in the mail instead of watching TV.”

The library’s books “nudge” children to make reading a regular habit. Many studies have found that children who are read to more frequently by their loved ones, spend more time reading together daily and ask more frequently for books to be read to them.

This program aims not only to boost a child’s love of reading but to improve their cognitive development and get them ready for elementary school by enlarging their vocabulary and improving their listening skills.

Kids who get the books tend to know more letters, understand how books and printed words work, recognize and retain words’ sounds, and both understand and use more spoken words. Similarly, children enrolled in the program have scored higher than their peers when they take a standard kindergarten entrance early-reading skills test.

In line with Parton’s original goal, the Imagination Library may do the most to change reading habits in lower-income homes – where children’s books tend to be scarce.

Alex H. Poole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/how-dolly-partons-imagination-library-is-helping-kids-start-reading-when-theyre-very-young/

Bruce Severy, a full-bearded, idealistic 26-year-old, moved from Southern California in 1973 to the small town of Drake, North Dakota, where he had accepted a job teaching English at the public high school. He, his small family and their menagerie of pets settled into a large, white frame house across from the school.

Severy’s progressive bent showed in the curriculum he taught. Insisting that his students should learn “how to think, not what to think,” he assigned his sophomore literature class contemporary fiction to read, including Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” a strange and quirky anti-war novel published four years prior.

While Severy chose works that he believed could help his students make sense of the problems confronting society, they clashed with the conservative values of his new home. A parent eventually complained about profanity in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” In November 1976, the Drake school board voted unanimously to remove the book from school premises. School officials told students to turn in their copies, and their lockers were searched if they refused. The district went on to burn 32 copies of the novel in the school furnace.

As a Vonnegut scholar, I’m fascinated by the backlash to “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which is now widely taught in high schools and colleges across the country. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court eventually weighed in on Vonnegut’s novel, there are direct parallels between that controversy and the politics of school censorship cases today, which continue to target “Slaughterhouse-Five,” among countless other works.

Vonnegut responds

News of what happened in Drake spread quickly in the press. Those who objected to the school board’s actions made comparisons to Nazi book burnings. The school district’s cause wasn’t helped by the fact that the superintendent’s last name was Fuhrman – evoking Adolf Hitler’s formal title, Führer – and the school board chairman’s last name was McCarthy, reminding the public of Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced anti-communist senator who sought to purge and censor Americans from all walks of life.

When Kurt Vonnegut learned of the case, he was both angry and saddened.

In a letter to the Drake school board, he insisted his books were “not sexy” and did not argue “in favor of wildness of any kind.” Instead, “they beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are.” He informed the board that he was a decorated World War II veteran who had fought against nations that hate books and burn them. He never received a reply.

The North Dakota incident, while the most egregious attempt to censor Vonnegut, was not the only case of its kind.

As “Slaughterhouse-Five” made its way into high school and college curricula, it faced a backlash by parents and school boards who argued the novel was obscene and immoral. Its irreverent treatment of Christianity was deemed blasphemous, while its unsparing portrayal of the U.S. military’s bombing of Dresden, Germany, was condemned as anti-American.

The book has been challenged as recently as January 2026, when the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of Vonnegut’s estate after Utah’s “sensitive materials law” gave school districts a mechanism to ban the novel.

The Supreme Court weighs in

Censorship cases involving “Slaughterhouse-Five” are complex because they have occurred almost entirely in high schools rather than colleges. Schools must balance their responsibility to decide what material is appropriate for younger students with students’ First Amendment rights to receive information and ideas.

One important case dealing with these issues made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1976, several board members from the Island Trees School district in Long Island, New York, reacting to a list of “inappropriate” titles publicized by a conservative activist group, objected to 11 books held in the districts’ school libraries or included in the curriculum.

Seven of the books were written by authors from minority ethnic or religious groups, including titles as seemingly inoffensive as “Best Stories of Negro Writers,” edited by Langston Hughes, and the young adult novel “A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich” by Alice Childress.

The 11th book on the list was “Slaughterhouse-Five.” At a press conference, school board member Frank Martin read excerpts from the novel out loud, focusing on a passage where one of Vonnegut’s characters, Kilgore Trout, reimagines the story of Christ’s crucifixion. Trout claims that this revised story actually offered a better moral than the original Gospel story: It teaches people to be kind to everyone, not just the well connected.

Martin, however, declared that even if the rest of the book told the best story in the world, he wouldn’t want it in the school library “with this stuff in it.”

Five high school students, led by 17-year-old Steven Pico, soon filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming the book removal was unconstitutional and that their First Amendment rights to freely receive information had been violated. The case wended its way through the lower courts for years, before it came to the Supreme Court in 1982.

Board of Education v. Pico was a tangled case. The justices wrote seven separate opinions and did not definitively settle the First Amendment issues. But a 5-4 majority did determine in favor of the students who argued that their case should have received a full trial rather than a summary judgment years ago.

As the only Supreme Court case to date involving censorship in school libraries, Pico, while a limited ruling, did set out general guidelines still used today.

The decision affirmed that school districts have the authority to supervise the education of students in their care and may remove materials that are, in the words of Justice William Brennan, “pervasively vulgar” or educationally unsuitable.

But such a decision may not be based on a school district’s objections to the ideas expressed in the books. Books may not be removed on narrowly partisan or political grounds, and removal must comply with the “transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.”

Book banning today

Despite the fact that the justices ruled that books cannot be banned on partisan or political grounds, book banning has been on the rise in America since 2020.

The literary and free speech advocacy group PEN America documented 2,532 instances of book bans in public schools in 2021–22. That figure rose to 3,362 in 2022–23 and nearly tripled to 10,046 in 2023–24.

Since then, the numbers have dipped somewhat but are still alarmingly high.

Surprisingly, many of the school censorship cases today still focus on the same old issues affecting “Slaughterhouse-Five” over 50 years ago – profanity, sexual content and violence. John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” has been the most frequently banned book in schools since 2021, mostly because of a brief, awkward sexual encounter between two main characters.

But fiction and memoirs focusing on gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues have increasingly become targets of censorship, abetted by right-wing parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty. George M. Johnson’s memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and Maia Kobabe’s autobiographical graphic novel “Gender Queer” are among the most banned books in schools in recent years.

And like the majority of the books banned in the Pico case, books by Black authors remain high on the list of school censorship cases. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” appears among the top 10 banned books since 2021, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved” comes in at No. 26. Ironically, “Beloved” was also named the single best work of American fiction since 1980 in a 2006 poll of writers and literary critics.

Kurt Vonnegut believed in and argued for First Amendment rights his whole career. In 1976 he told students at Connecticut College that language and literature were “holy” to him. He thought schools should resolve to expose children to all sorts of opinions and information, to make better citizens.

But he wasn’t too hopeful. Arguing against book banning, he wearily concluded, was like “attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans.”

Susan Farrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/more-than-50-years-after-a-north-dakota-school-district-burned-copies-of-kurt-vonneguts-slaughterhouse-five-the-anti-war-novel-is-still-being-censored/

On Pakistan’s Indus delta coast, a 350,000-hectare mangrove project is turning a growing forest into something that can be sold to companies thousands of miles away: carbon credits.

Carbon credits allow companies to pay for projects that store carbon or prevent further emissions, with each credit equalling a certain amount of carbon. Restoring mangroves can generate credits as a healthy, growing forest absorbs and stores carbon. It’s part of a thriving billion dollar industry.

But that forest was already worth something to the thousands of people living there. It protects 60 villages from storms, provides nursery habitat for fish and is a source of wood, honey and thatch.

The difference points to a bigger problem. A mangrove has at least two kinds of value: the value that can be packaged and sold to a (wealthy) distant buyer, and the value that is experienced locally but is much harder to monetise. Only the first has a market built around it.

This gap will be under the spotlight at the upcoming UN climate summit Cop31 in Antalya, Turkey, this November. At last year’s Cop30, governments called for the money provided by wealthy countries to help communities cope with the consequences of climate change to at least triple by 2035. For those living in mangrove forests, this so-called adaptation finance could help them survive stronger cyclones and rising seas.

But a decade of climate finance has built pipes that tend to run in one direction, towards whatever can be measured, traded and exported. Pour adaptation money into that plumbing and it comes out where the pipes already exist.

Restoration has become a new kind of market, and like any market it creates jobs, contracts, training and monitoring. But it also distributes what it generates along a chain of intermediaries: verifiers, brokers, aggregators, certifiers, each taking a share before anything reaches a village.

How large a share is unknowable: only a tenth of intermediaries disclose what profits they make. And the agreements meant to pass value back are scarce: of 47 carbon credit project documents the not-for-profit Carbon Market Watch reviewed, only 15 mentioned benefit sharing, and just four showed evidence of sharing benefits with local or Indigenous communities.

Most arguments about fairness ask what percentage local people get at the end. But that leaves out the bigger question of what they have to give up along the way.

Beyond money sits something more complex: every restoration project involves trade-offs, and somebody carries them. Protecting carbon stored in mangrove forests can mean closing a fishing ground. Planting for biodiversity can mean growing species that yield no firewood or fruit. Dredging channels and replanting in tidy single-species blocks can produce a forest that scores well on a monitoring form, but no longer resembles the one people knew how to live in.

These are choices, not accidents. The pattern is often familiar: costs are immediate, local and certain, while benefits are deferred, distant and uncertain. A global analysis of 88 mangrove restoration studies in 2021 found that restored forests often recover fewer ecological functions than comparable natural forests, and the waiting period can impose real short-term costs on communities living alongside them.

When restoration becomes a trade-off

Communities who live in mangroves are so often cast as part of this problem. A family cutting wood or fishing inside a protected zone becomes an encroacher, their extraction the thing restoration must stop. Yet communities have regulated their own use of these forests for generations.

The Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, spans India and Bangladesh. There, people of all religions invoke Bonbibi, guardian of the forest, who protects those entering out of need and punishes those who come out of greed. Her story is one part of a broader body of local knowledge about how people should use and care for the forest.

That knowledge can inform restoration, helping decide which species are planted where, and turning planting into stewardship that people sustain after the funding ends. Where it is sidelined, researchers have described the result as green colonialism. What changed is not local people’s greed, but the terms: who may take, who may sell, and who gets to call it exploitation.

Those terms keep moving, because success itself keeps being redefined. The Matang mangroves on Malaysia’s west coast have been managed and documented since 1902, the longest such record anywhere. The forest has remained productive, but what counts as success has changed: first charcoal for a colonial economy, then timber for a newly independent nation, then biodiversity, now carbon, with biodiversity credits close behind.

Each time, new priorities emerged, and the definition of a healthy forest rearranged itself to match. Communities often appear in that story when their labour is useful, and recede when it is not.

What counts as success?

Seen this way, restoration projects can have three broad outcomes. In the first, the ecosystem recovers and local people hold a fair share of the value. In the second, it recovers but the value drains to intermediaries and distant buyers. In the third, the scheme collapses because the rush to sell was never governed.

The uncomfortable part is that the second outcome can still count as success. A 2026 review of 77 ocean or coastal carbon storage projects found it is rarely possible to tell which outcome you are looking at, because community involvement is so seldom documented.

The second outcome is the one worth fixing: the most common and the most deceptive. That means putting the people who live in and around restoration projects at the centre of deciding what worked.

This is the question our Revive project is exploring. Working across three Malaysian sites, we start with what residents themselves count as a good outcome, then trace how those outcomes trade off against the value chains built around the forest.

Trade-offs cannot be designed away. What can change is who decides. At present, decision-making often follows whoever is paying, which is how success can be met while the people doing the restoring are worse off. Communities who have managed these forests for generations should be setting the terms, not receiving them.

We can measure a mangrove’s carbon to the tonne. We still cannot say who paid for it, in fish, in access or in time. Until those who pay are the ones defining success, tripling the money risks tripling the imbalance.

Aarti Krishnan receives funding from UK Research ad Innovation and Global Centre for Biodiversity and Climate (GCBC). She is affiliated with South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, University of Johannesburg

Ahmad Aldrie Amir works for Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He receives funding from various government and private organisations. He is affiliated with the IUCN SSC Mangrove Specialist Group and The Malaysian Mangrove Research Alliance & Network (MyMangrove).

Behara Satyanarayana works for Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. He receives funding from the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia. He is also affiliated to University Libre Brussels (ULB, Belgium) as Potential Scientific Collaborator and member of the IUCN Mangrove Specialist Group.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/mangrove-restoration-is-becoming-big-business-but-benefits-dont-always-reach-local-people/

The U.S. government has pitched an obscure accounting rule change that has ignited a firestorm of opposition. If enacted, its effects might be felt from the capital markets to your retirement savings account.

At issue is a proposal by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would scrap a long-standing requirement for registered companies to disclose their earnings every three months. Instead, they would have the option to do so only every six months.

The agency says its proposal has two goals: One is to reduce a company’s compliance costs needed to prepare financial statements; the other is to promote longer-term planning rather than a short-term fixation on earnings. A final decision is expected by late 2026.

These ideas may sound in the weeds to the average American, but the proposal has prompted opposition that is literally record-breaking ever since it was released for comments in May 2026. To date, over 280,000 letters have come in, with the vast majority against. By comparison, one study that covered 417 different proposals over 30 years tallied more than 65,000 letters total.

I’m an accounting professor who has constructed a tracker that lets people scour the SEC docket and decipher the general sentiment of these comments. I found that the main driver of this hostility is concern that less frequent reporting would make it harder for investors to monitor companies’ performance and decision-making, because key information is withheld for longer periods.

This reduction in transparency carries another risk as well: It would likely make it more expensive for companies to raise capital. Once external monitoring is reduced, investors may demand a higher rate of return because they have less information about the company’s health. That means the company would need to pay more for that uncertainty, whether through selling shares, borrowing from lenders or issuing bonds.

In short, there’s a trade-off between the cost of capital and transparency.

A tsunami of opposition

If a business wants to be a publicly traded company, it has to register with the SEC, which governs and regulates this process. Once registered, the company has to disclose its financial performance every three months, a requirement that has held since 1970.

Whenever the agency issues a new rule, it opens it up to comments first, just like other government agencies do. That feedback is meant to shape the final rule before it becomes codified.

What’s unusual in this case is the overwhelming degree of opposition – more than 99% of all comments, many from retail and individual investors, according to my tracker.

“My husband worked for Enron. We lost most of our retirement savings when their fraudulent activity came to light,” wrote one commenter. “We were still young enough to make some of that income back, but we knew many retirees who ended up working into their 80’s. Quarterly reporting is a gate keeper. Keep it.”

Wrote another: “I rely on quarterly reporting for the same reason your child gets a quarterly report card. … There the metaphor ends, because a good teacher can catch failing performance and course correct with parents long before report cards are issued. Investors do not have that luxury.”

Some point out that the commission’s claim of company savings on compliance costs is overblown. The estimated average savings, according to the proposal, is around US$200,000 a year per firm, which is a drop in the bucket for a typical public corporation.

But more broadly, the comments reveal how much this rule could matter to ordinary investors. Retirement savings, through accounts like 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts, are directly exposed to company performance, whether or not the fund in question is diversified. That means any reduction in financial transparency has direct implications on how the investments of the funds are monitored.

That risk was laid out in a letter from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, or SIFMA. The trade group wrote that the estimated net savings “could be offset or outweighed by an increase in the cost of capital as investors demand higher risk premia for less timely information.”

Federated Hermes, an asset manager, also pointed to this scenario: “Issuers that elect semiannual reporting may face signaling risks, as investors could interpret such a choice as reflecting reduced transparency,” the letter said. “This may affect analyst coverage and cost of capital.”

Companies weigh in

As for the companies themselves, it’s too early to say whether they would take advantage of the six-month option. But several have said they would choose to report less frequently.

Drugmaker Eli Lilly is one example, making clear its preference in its official comment, while letters from Financial Executives International, an industry lobby, stated that 58% of the member companies it surveyed suggested they would change.

For its part, the commission is still evaluating all the feedback before its leadership takes a vote. Traditionally, it’s led by five commissioners, with three representing the party in power and two from the opposition. However, in this case, the two Democratic seats in the minority are currently vacant, and one Republican seat is about to be vacated.

With so few votes on hand, the commission may in fact change its rules so that this proposal could clear with support from only two commissioners. On Sept. 30, 2026, it suggested a rule change so that the two votes would suffice.

For now, SEC Chair Paul Atkins seems undeterred and has stated that the commission is moving ahead.

How many companies will make the move given the concerns laid out in the comments, however, remains an open question.

As the SEC’s own Investor Advisory Committee, an independent body, put it: “The evidence does not support the view that short-termism is a major problem for U.S. public companies today, nor is there strong evidence to support the view that costs for public companies would be significantly reduced.”

Tzachi Zach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/us-regulators-want-to-make-corporate-earnings-reports-less-frequent-but-investors-have-doubts/

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 to 1919) is popularly misunderstood as a slightly dodgy painter of kitsch nudes. Renoir and Love at the National Gallery in London sets the record straight. As Chiara di Stefano, co-curator for the exhibition admits, she grew up “hating Renoir somehow”. She says it can “be troubling for some, especially women viewers, to see his nudes”.

These late paintings depict voluptuous women in timeless landscapes, lacking the social context of his earlier work. But this show concentrates on an earlier period of discovery and invention, from his mid 20s to his mid 40s. “The idea was really to let people encounter the works and let the works do the talking by themselves, and understand how innovative and daring he was as a painter, and how he experimented with technique so much in just 20 years,” explains di Stefano.

There are numerous excellent loans, and the curators have restricted the selection to the strongest decades of the artist’s work. There are text panels in this exhibition, to frame what is in each room. But they are not long. Renoir’s paintings are allowed to take centre stage, without any other mediation or explanation. For this reason, the visitor is unlikely to leave with a radically revised view of Renoir’s life or politics. They will, however, leave with a deep appreciation for Renoir as an artistic innovator and painter of the first rank.

Renoir and Love is an ambitious enterprise, and it is beautifully staged from its first impression. As visitors descend the staircase to the exhibition floor, two of his large dance paintings appear framed through a large open doorway, creating an immediate sense of generous conviviality typical of Renoir’s work. The foyer floor has a mottled light projection redolent of the dappled light in Renoir’s breakthrough impressionist paintings of the late 1860s and early to mid 1870s.

The painting that best exemplifies Renoir’s talent is the dazzling canvas of 1876, Dance at the Moulin de la Galette. It’s the first time this painting has been exhibited in London. The presence of this painting is sufficient reason to visit the show – and, for me, it is the highlight.

The scale of Dance at the Moulin de la Galette signals Renoir’s ambition. In 1876, a canvas this large was expected to feature polished scenes drawn from history, mythology or the Bible, high-status academic or religious works such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Pietà, painted that same year. Renoir described his scene of ordinary residents of working-class Montmartre relaxing as “a page of history”, the history of the people. If you are familiar only with seeing this work in reproduction, the experience of seeing it in the flesh is startling.

The painting has a conventional recessional depth: dancing figures get smaller as they recede into the background. But throughout the scene there’s a pattern of broken, dotted light, in a lighter hue than the dominant purply-mauve that ties the scene together, this dappled light comes toward the viewer, like a tangible veil. It is a painting that conveys the immediacy and spatial ambiguity of perception in the moment, as though the viewer has lifted their eyelids on an unfamiliar scene.

The feeling of being within the picture is enhanced by other details. There’s a gap in the bottom left of the canvas between two benches, as though the viewer could squeeze their way through to the dance floor. The dancing couple closest to the viewer appears to return the your gaze, as though that person has just arrived. This rippling painting captures the fleeting perception of evanescent leisure.

Throughout this period, Renoir painted many scenes of people resting at peak satisfaction immediately after a meal. The earliest such work on display, Mother Anthony’s Tavern (1866), shows a gathering of the painters Alfred Sisley and Jules Le Coeur with another friend Henri Bos. A young woman clears the table. The wall behind them bears a caricature of the writer Henri Murger, author of Scenes of Bohemian Life, the source of Puccini’s opera La Bohème. In front of them is the newspaper L’Événement, which carried writer Emile Zola’s vehement and radical art criticism. This is just part of Renoir’s circle of friends. Much of the love in this show is fraternal.

It’s easy to confuse the artist with their work, and to imagine that if someone paints relaxed scenes of post-prandial indulgence, then that must be a reflection of their life. In that case, Renoir’s Self-Portrait of 1875 may come as a shock. The painter appears gaunt, on-edge.

Unlike most of the impressionists, Renoir was from a working-class background. His family were skilled artisans. From the age of 14, he painted porcelain for a living, often working from Rococo masters such as Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, echoes of whose work can be seen throughout his oeuvre. Renoir worked in a state of financial precarity until he was in his 50s and – by his own account, which is borne out by correspondence from his friends – there were many occasions on which he did not eat. In this way, he was a man of his time.

Renoir’s bohemian contemporaries, from the slightly older Édouard Manet to the writer Émile Zola, depicted the sordid poverty and alienation of modern Paris. But unlike them, and despite being more exposed to the harsh conditions of Paris in the 1860s and 1870s, Renoir’s determination was to show people in their most relaxed and most flattering light.

Impressionism appears to us now as though it is a given: a brightly glowing expression of the Belle Époque (1871 to 1914). It is not Renoir’s sole invention, but it is remarkable that this light and joyous movement was developed against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 to 1871. Renoir was drafted, his close friend and supporter Frédéric Bazille was killed, and Camille Pissarro’s early impressionist works were destroyed.

Yet on his return to Paris, Renoir continued to paint joyously seductive scenes even though the bitter internal conflict of a civil war in Paris left corpses in the streets. Against this grim backdrop, Renoir chose to focus on the transient joy of life.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/renoir-and-love-is-a-wonderful-celebration-of-the-fleeting-joys-of-life/

Seaweed piling up on a beach might look harmless, but as quantities begin to rot, they can release gases that are toxic to people.

In recent years, two people and several animals (including a horse and 36 wild boar) have died after inhaling toxic gases from decomposing seaweed on the Brittany coast in France. And between January and August 2018, thousands of people reported headaches, nausea and eye irritation after inhaling seaweed gas in the Caribbean.

Seaweeds are generally a good thing. They provide structure to coastal ecosystems, store carbon from the atmosphere, and they’re a sustainable food source. But when seaweeds grow uncontrollably, they can become a nuisance.

Vast patches of seaweed often develop after nutrients are released into rivers and coastal seas from sewage treatment works or run-off from farmland. Warm weather further stimulates their rapid growth. When ocean currents and wind push free-floating patches of seaweed together, seaweed strandings can inundate the coastline with often devastating consequences. These uncontrollable seaweed “blooms” can suffocate marine life. This harms fisheries, tourism industries and coastal communities relying on healthy ocean ecosystems.

The best way to avoid catastrophic consequences like this is to remove seaweed before it piles up and produces a concentrated accumulation of toxic gases. Workers removing the seaweed are at the highest risk of deadly gas inhalation due to their proximity to the source. Low-level exposure to nearby seaweed strandings is also a concern.

Once collected, seaweed can be used as a soil additive and fertiliser or for energy generation (anaerobic digestion of seaweed produces methane-rich biogas for heating and electricity).

Composition of the culprits

Scientists know little about the composition of gases in decaying seaweed. Prime nuisance candidates are hydrogen sulfide, which produces a typical rotten-egg smell, and ammonia, which has a pungent odour.

Both are hazardous at high concentrations. Guidelines from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work suggest that the legal limit of five to 20 parts per million (ppm) of these gases must not be exceeded.

When starting to research this subject in 2018, I found little scientific information about the composition of toxic seaweed gases. With the help of a team of students and scientists, I quantified the amount and diversity of gases released from two nuisance seaweed species in the UK: green gut weed (Ulva intestinalis) and brown wireweed (Sargassum muticum).

Our initial tests confirmed that hydrogen sulfide is a key contributor to the overall gas bouquet but ammonia was not released during the first eight days of our laboratory experiment.

When focusing our analyses on sulfur gases, we identified a range of toxic volatiles (gases and vapour which easily evaporate) that could cause respiratory illness and death. These included high amounts of hydrogen sulfide and dimethyl sulfide, a climate-cooling gas that makes the typical smell of the sea. Others included the highly toxic methane thiol that smells of decayed cabbage, and dimethyl disulfide, which has a garlic smell.

Sulfur emissions were significantly higher for Ulva intestinalis than for Sargassum muticum in seawater. This suggests that different seaweed species may differ in their potential to cause illness.

Read more:
From a salty breeze to the stench of sewage, here’s how smell affects our ocean experience and reflects changing seas

Seaweed growth can be stimulated by excessive nutrient-rich run-off, including fertilisers or sewage pollution. But harmful bacteria in sewage could be concentrated by seaweed strandings. When pollutants are released into our rivers, environmental engineers calculate the dilution to keep contaminants below legal limits. This minimises the risks to swimmers, fish and other aquatic life.

But even if just a few nasty bugs end up in seaweed strandings, these may proliferate inside the decaying seaweed mass where conditions are warm, humid and anaerobic (oxygen is absent) – similar to the gut of humans and other animals.

Here, harmful bacteria could grow and exceed safe limits, dramatically increasing the risk of infection. We found various bacteria in the decaying seaweed that are associated with the human intestine and faeces. These can cause severe illness.
Some of the bacteria we found on the surface of decaying seaweed were resistant to antibiotics that they may have been exposed to in our sewage. This suggests that seaweed strandings can propagate infections that are difficult to treat.

Climate change will probably increase seaweed strandings as environmental conditions worsen. Further proliferation of nuisance species into new habitats may increase health risks too, so preventing the build-up of seaweed strandings is crucial.

Read more:
How a toxic seaweed choking Caribbean beaches could become a valuable resource

Removal and spray solutions

Removing the seaweed is only possible if the location is accessible. Employing staff and hiring equipment to rake up tonnes of seaweed can also be expensive. Removal of one of the largest seaweed strandings in China involved more than 10,000 workers and cost upwards of US$100 million (£76 million). Funding that is difficult for small coastal communities.

Our experiments showed that adding freshwater to decaying seaweed changes the decomposition process. Soaking in freshwater decreased the amount of sulfate, an abundant dissolved component of seawater that anaerobic bacteria use to produce toxic hydrogen sulfide, resulting in up to a 99% decrease in hazardous gases.

Freshwater is not always readily available, particularly on small Caribbean islands that get inundated with sargassum seaweed. But locations with access to reservoirs or rivers could potentially pump-spray a seaweed stranding before it becomes a health hazard – a mitigation strategy that should be explored.

Michael Steinke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/seaweed-strandings-cause-a-stink-heres-why-they-harm-your-health/

As Americans prepared to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday on the morning of July 4, sobering images flashed across their phones and TV screens. Hundreds of masked men marched the streets of Washington carrying flags and chanting “Reclaim America!” It soon became clear from the logos on their identical baseball caps that the marchers were members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist group.

The march ended without incident. Still, it joined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol – both of which culminated in deadly violence – as recent mass demonstrations with participants who openly embrace white nationalism. Members of a loosely organized movement that usually operates out of public view, white nationalists hold that shifting demographics pose an existential threat to the white race, which they view as culturally superior and deserving of power over other groups in the U.S.

Combined with the spread of white nationalist ideology from obscure corners of the internet into mainstream politics, these events have led many Americans to wonder: How extensive is white nationalism’s appeal among the broader public, and who is drawn to this extremist ideology?

We are political scientists who study political behavior, identity and social media. In recently published research in the scientific journal Nature, we offer some answers to these questions using national surveys we conducted with nearly 8,000 non-Hispanic white Americans from 2021 to 2025.

Asking Americans about white nationalism

We expected many Americans would be unfamiliar with the term “white nationalism,” so we defined it for survey respondents with a brief statement covering the movement’s major tenets: the purported need to maintain a white majority in the U.S., claims about the superiority of white culture, and calls for white people to hold more political and economic power than other groups. We measured endorsement of the movement’s ideology, not participation in the movement itself or approval of its tactics.

We randomly varied whether respondents saw the description before or after we asked whether they supported the white nationalist movement. Overall, nearly 5% of white adults – about 1 in 20 – said they did.

Those asked the question before seeing the description were less likely to express support at first, but their reported support rose after they read it. Along with several tests for possible response bias, this suggests that 5% is a reasonable lower-bound estimate of the true level of support.

Whether 1 in 20 white adults is a high or low number is a matter of interpretation. For context, it’s roughly the same as the share of American adults who identify as vegetarian or vegan.

Young white men

A number that jumped out to us was the share of white men under age 30 who support white nationalism: just over 13%, or about 1 in 7. This was more than twice the level of support for white nationalism among women in this age group: 6%. Endorsement of white nationalism among men significantly declined by age: Only 2% of white men age 65 and over registered support.

Our discovery that white men born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act were more likely to reject white nationalism than those coming of age today may come as a surprise, as younger white Americans typically hold more tolerant views on racial matters than their elders. But young men have long been overrepresented in extremist groups, and white nationalism’s grievance narrative may resonate for young white men today as they fall behind previous generations of men on key indicators like finishing college, starting careers and forming families, as well as on their overall health.

Online life

Another key predictor of support: online social life that crowds out offline relationships. We asked respondents to call to mind their three best friends and then to tell us whether each friend was known only offline, only online or both.

We found that the more best friends known only online, the stronger one’s support for white nationalism. The internet and particularly social media are channels through which people may be exposed to white nationalist content. They are also places where alienated people may turn for the human connections they lack offline.

Interestingly, we did not find a general relationship between more social media use and more support for white nationalism. So while online life appears to be related to support for white nationalism, what matters in our findings is not how much people use social media, but whether their closest friends are known only online.

Individual and social strain

Strain, whether defined as undergoing personal difficulties or being exposed to wider social distress, is also a strong predictor of support for white nationalism. We asked respondents whether they had suffered from specific hardships over the past year, including the death of a loved one, losing a job, being the victim of a crime or getting divorced. Respondents experiencing more of these adversities were more likely to endorse white nationalism.

Social strain in the counties where respondents live – such as poverty, unemployment and population loss – emerged as another strong predictor of support for white nationalism, as did countywide rates of “deaths of despair,” which include suicide and deaths associated with drug and alcohol use. In other words, support for white nationalism was higher among people living in more distressed or economically depressed places.

More than just partisan politics

White nationalism is often cast as a political phenomenon by advocates, commentators and scholars, and indeed it is.

We found in our research that white Democrats and liberals are significantly less likely to endorse white nationalism than white Republicans and conservatives. However, we also found high levels of support among those who were unsure of their ideology or partisanship, suggesting a potential untapped reservoir of political support for white nationalist ideas.

Still, our findings show that support for white nationalism cannot be explained solely by partisan politics. Larger forces, including generational change, the ubiquity of the internet and the strain Americans are experiencing in part due to profound economic transformation are at work.

In our view, those who seek to understand and address this critical development in American public life must reckon with the broad structural shifts that have reshaped Americans’ identities, social relations and sense of economic security and that undergird white nationalism’s appeal to the broader public.

Funding for this research was provided in part by an NYU Mega-Grant Initiative Seed Award. The NYU Center for Social Media, AI and Politics was supported while this research was carried out by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Siegel Family Endowment.

James Bisbee and Patrick Egan do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/02/white-nationalisms-appeal-runs-deeper-than-partisan-politics/